Sunday, December 14, 2014

Gay Christians choosing celibacy emerge from the closet

When Eve Tushnet converted to Catholicism in 1998, she thought she might be the world’s first celibate Catholic lesbian.Having grown up in a liberal, upper Northwest Washington home before moving on to Yale University, the then-19-year-old knew no other gay Catholics who embraced the church’s ban on sex outside heterosexual marriage. Her decision to abstain made her an outlier.“Everyone I knew totally rejected it,” she said of the church’s teaching on gay sexuality.Today, Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians who find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is busy speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants and is the most well-known of 20 bloggers who post on spiritualfriendship.org, a site for celibate gay and lesbian Christians that draws thousands of visitors each month.

1 comment:

Yes. There have always been homosexuals in the Church, just as there have always been homosexuals in the military. The reason homosexuals in the military were told to shut up and keep it way back in the closet was because we didn't want the military mission compromised by having loud, proud gays and their female friends deconstruct the institution. Don't Ask, Don't Tell wasn't good enough for gay activists, so now it's Never Shut Up.

Same with the Church. Every wretch up there receiving communion is a flawed human being; it doesn't mean we deconstruct the Church to validate sin so we feel better about ourselves. May God be with this woman in her Christian walk.

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